AbbVie believes political risks of drug pricing are "waning"

President Trump and left-leaning lawmakers have excoriated pharmaceutical companies for the rising prices of prescription drugs. But top executives of drug giant AbbVie, including CEO Richard Gonzalez, think the outrage is fading and won't lead to any large-scale changes, according to a meeting AbbVie held with pharmaceutical analysts from investment bank Leerink Partners.

Key quote, from the Leerink report: "AbbVie believes that the intensity of the drug pricing debates and political risks is waning, and ... the company now sees little risk of significant changes in drug price regulation in the U.S., at least for the foreseeable future."

The bottom line: Trump's attacks on the drug industry once again look empty. Lawmakers, the FDA and the drug industry have tossed around some ideas that tinker with drug competition, but anything involving price controls has been a nonstarter for nearly everyone in Congress.

But wait, there's more: AbbVie, which makes the top-selling drug Humira, had committed to limiting price increases to below 10% no more than once a year. But AbbVie executives told Leerink analysts they created that policy due to "the political landscape surrounding drug pricing," and that it could "revert to more than one price increase per year and to double-digit increases in 2018 and beyond."

Pedestrian killed by self-driving Uber in Arizona

A pedestrian was struck and killed by a self-driving Uber in Tempe, Arizona, early Monday morning, according to ABC15. Tempe police said that the vehicle was in autonomous mode, though a safety driver was behind the wheel at the time of the crash.

Why it matters: The New York Times notes that this could be the first pedestrian ever killed by a self-driving vehicle. Uber says it's closely following its incident response process, though it declined to share more details about what that entails. The company has also paused its self-driving cars in all locations (Pittsburgh, Tempe, San Francisco and Toronto).

“Our hearts go out to the victim’s family. We are fully cooperating with local authorities in their investigation of this incident.”

— Uber spokesperson

Background: A key question as police continue to investigate the crash is why the safety driver was unable or failed to intervene.

An Axios analysis of California DMV accident reports last year showed that humans cause most accidents that involve a self-driving car.

According to NHTSA data, which was collected from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, 37,461 lives were lost on U.S. roads in 2016, an increase of 5.6 percent from calendar year 2015.